Mark Pope’s first recruiting miss believes in brighter future for UK basketball
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Saunders said he came very close to leaving BYU but ultimately stayed.
- Saunders expressed continued belief in Pope’s work ethic and prospects for success.
- Saunders remained at BYU and was widely projected as a 2026 second-round pick.
Something resembling pride crept into Richie Saunders’ voice when asked to clarify a simple fact around a matter that had occurred a little more than two years earlier.
Wasn’t he the very first recruit that Mark Pope brought to Lexington after leaving BYU to take over as the head men’s basketball coach at the University of Kentucky?
“I was,” Saunders confirmed.
How close did he actually get to leaving his home state and following his former coach? The conflicting emotions around that decision were still clear as day, even a couple of years later.
“Oh man,” Saunders said. “It was really close.”
Back then, the UK basketball world was in a collective state of euphoria.
Pope was a few days removed from his electric introductory press conference inside Rupp Arena, which took on a revival-like atmosphere that gave the new coach immense momentum as he took charge of his alma mater.
Kentucky fans were following their new leader’s every move, and when Saunders and his wife, Sierra, landed at Blue Grass Airport to begin their recruiting trip, Pope and his wife, Lee Anne, were there to greet them. It didn’t take long for the photos of that reunion to hit social media, and it didn’t take long after that for Saunders to get the full sense of the UK basketball fishbowl.
There was a lot of good. So much of it that Saunders came oh so close to bolting from BYU and becoming a Wildcat. There was some bad after he decided to stay put in Provo, and he can laugh about that now.
What hasn’t changed over the course of those two years is the admiration he holds for his first college coach.
“I love the Popes, and I believe in that dude as a coach,” Saunders said in an interview with the Herald-Leader at the NBA Combine last month. “You know, it was one of the hardest decisions of my life.”
The 24-year-old smiled as he recalled one aspect of the process that likely wasn’t quite as humorous at the time.
“I think it’s funny, because people have gone at my wife for this on Twitter and all those things,” Saunders said with a laugh. “I’m sure half-hearted. I’m married to an SEC girl. She’s from Arkansas. So it was funny when they were saying something about that. But no, I wish nothing but the best for the Popes. Love them.”
The coincidence of his wife coming from the same state that Pope’s predecessor, John Calipari, left Lexington for was not lost on Saunders, who ultimately turned down the offer to transfer to Kentucky, leading a segment of disgruntled UK fans to look for someone to blame as they connected those geographical dots.
It’s all water under the bridge now, and the decision worked out OK for everyone involved.
Saunders returned to BYU and emerged as one of the Big 12’s best players under new head coach Kevin Young, who helped put the 6-foot-5 guard in position to be an NBA draft pick this month.
Despite missing on his former player, Pope was able to assemble a formidable roster on the fly. And if Saunders had joined the fold early, it’s possible that later additions — like future NBA draft pick Koby Brea, a key player on that first Pope team — might’ve ended up elsewhere.
Saunders remained focused on his own career, but he kept an eye on what Pope was doing in Lexington, too. He knows about the major injuries that have defined Pope’s first two seasons — one of the most notable impacting his former BYU teammate, Jaxson Robinson — and was clearly well aware of the fan angst surrounding his former coach at the time of the Combine.
Back then, Pope’s Cats were nowhere to be found in the early Top 25 rankings for the 2026-27 season. The UK coach was on a nationally recognized run of recruiting misses. And an increasing number of fans were growing antsy over the future of the program.
Shortly after Saunders had joked about some of those same fans throwing shade at his decision from two years earlier, he took on a deeply serious tone when asked why he believed so strongly that Pope would ultimately win big in Lexington.
“That dude works. He’s a workhorse,” Saunders said. “He just knows how to work, and he’s gonna get the job done. I believe it.”
A lot has happened since he offered up that vote of confidence.
Malachi Moreno announced that he would return to Kentucky for another season under Pope, despite his status as a potential first-round NBA pick. Milan Momcilovic announced that he would join the Cats for the 2026-27 season, giving Pope the best 3-point shooter in the sport. And five-star class of 2027 prospect Ryan Hampton announced his commitment to UK, helping Pope gain some much-needed momentum in high school recruiting circles.
Even though he’s a BYU Cougar for life, each of those developments surely left Saunders smiling as he embarks on the start of his professional basketball career.
Just because he didn’t follow Pope to Lexington two years ago doesn’t mean he’s not rooting for his former coach. At the time, there was perhaps no player closer to Pope and his family.
Saunders earned a scholarship offer from BYU when he was 15 years old, while Pope was still at Utah Valley, but he didn’t commit to the Cougars until he was a senior in high school. He made that pledge six days before Pope coached his first game with the program.
He watched as Pope found immediate success, leading BYU to a 24-8 record in his first season, which would’ve ended with the program’s first NCAA Tournament bid in five years if not for the COVID-19 pandemic.
Pope took the Cougars to the NCAA Tournament the next season, while Saunders was in Year 1 of his two-year Mormon mission. He joined the team in the summer of 2022, flashed promise as a freshman and even more as a sophomore, helping BYU exceed expectations in its first season in the Big 12 to such a degree that Pope was picked to be Kentucky’s next coach.
The decision that came next proved to be an example of the recruiting dilemma most coveted players will face: liking the fit at multiple schools but being able to pick just one.
During that time, Saunders said he turned to Utah Jazz executive Danny Ainge for advice. Ainge, a three-time NBA champion as a player and executive with the Boston Celtics, was a four-year player at BYU and has been a longtime supporter of the program.
Obviously, Saunders ended up staying put, and he quickly flourished under Young, who was a hot name in NBA head coaching discussions while serving as the top assistant for the Phoenix Suns before taking the BYU job.
“I mean, it was two different experiences with two different coaches,” Saunders said. “And so I think that was big — getting to learn from two different ways of doing stuff. I think it was huge for me as a person and as a basketball player …
“I’ve built my life on work, and being able to take the skill set of (Young) and preparing people for the NBA was something that I don’t take lightly. He taught me how to play in this league and how to be successful and take that to this next level and do it.”
Saunders, who suffered a torn ACL during his senior year at BYU, is still recovering from that injury but said he expected to be at full strength by the time the 2026-27 season begins. He’s widely projected as a second-round pick in this month’s NBA draft. He wasn’t even ranked among the top 300 recruits in his high school class.
At the Combine, he praised Young for continuing his development that benefited from significant strides under Pope and expressed gratitude for the “stability” he found as a four-year player at one school, a rarity these days in high-level college basketball.
And as Saunders spoke of his first college coach’s work ethic and the way in which it strengthened his own basketball resolve, it was impossible not to think back on some of Pope’s first public comments after taking the Kentucky job.
The day Saunders left Lexington to fly back to Utah and mull over his basketball future, Pope sat down for an extensive interview with the Herald-Leader. During that discussion, he referenced driving “a recruit” — it was Saunders — to the airport early that morning after a late night working the transfer portal for more potential additions.
“Have you slept?” the player asked Pope.
According to the Kentucky coach, this was his response.
“Imagine taking on the biggest project of your entire lifetime. Like, it will be a defining thing in your career, but also a project where your whole heart and soul — and all your love and all your family — is in it. And it’s so exhilarating. Imagine getting to do what you love most in the world with who you love most in the world, facing the biggest challenge you’ve ever faced in your life.
“And that’s what we get to do right now.”
Two years later, Saunders is off to the NBA. But he still has faith in the coach he left behind.
